The Hunter Valley is NSW’s wine region. We drove up and rented bikes and biked from vineyard to vineyard, doing some tastings along the way. The weather was perfect, cloudless and warm. The terrain was definitely not flat so biking was quite an effort. Each vineyard we’d get to and we’d both be dripping sweat, our hair all messed up, sucking wind and the other people there are in their khaki pants and polo shirts and all dressed up. But unlike how I think that would have gone over in somewhere like Napa, nobody here cared that we were somewhat disastrous. Regarding the wine, we’re not big wine people so all I can say is I liked some of them, but they don’t taste all that different from other wines I’ve had. The countryside was gorgeous, but I think I’ll be forever tainted by the wine region near Cape Town because I don’t see how anything could really compare with that on a scenic level. But it was really a perfect day and biking around to get from place to place was really enjoyable. And a very momentous occurrence for us in the afternoon was our first wild kangaroo sightings! One of the guys in the winery was telling us that there are kangaroo by the dozen out on the hillside usually in the afternoons and sure enough, when we left there on the hill were dozens and dozens of kangaroo. And eventually most of them hopped down towards a little pond to drink from…it was really exciting. And then pulling into the little road where we had to return the bikes, there in front of us were three kangaroo just watching us. We walked up a bit to them and then moved off over a hill a little, but when we got closer there were still there and ended up bounding up towards us. We both thought they were charging us but they stopped a little ways off, watched us a bit more and then left. In the evening we went to this brewery, the Bluetongue, where we had some of their local brews and then had dinner in the attached restaurant. We stayed the night in the little town nearby, but trying to not spend a fortune on the fancy hotels that they have there, we booked a place that’s part of a pub. It ended up being we were right above this pub that had live music going until past 2 in the morning…lesson learned, don’t stay in a pub hotel unless you want music blasting in your room into the night. Sunday we had breakfast at a place known for their champagnes and then did a little drive to Werakata National Park which is nearby. We drove on some very “unsealed” roads into the park, in the middle of some dense vegetation…walked around a bit, thought we were going to be lost in there forever, but eventually found our way out. Had lunch at another place (basically all we did was eat and drink for the whole weekend) and then got on the road back to the city. Very fun weekend, the Hunter Valley was great. I think we’re going to go back in a few months maybe for a daytrip when it’s more wine season because the grapes are about to start growing now, but really haven’t yet so we want to see it when everything is in its prime.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=bqmhkbd.a9d5ghk5&x=0&y=alkegx&localeid=en_US
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